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Friday, September 20, 2013

All Brain, No Mind

In this article, Greg Koukl examines the question, "Are we just a brain?" and responds to a Time article that supports that we are. He states:

Of course I think you know better than to accept this, but you may be intimidated by scientists in white coats telling you that you aren't really feeling love, you're just having a chemical reaction. You're not really seeing something beautiful, this is just light of various wave lengths. You're not really hearing something wonderful, it is just vibrating molecules.But there is a deeper problem. If consciousness is just a property created by the brain, then when you make a decision who or what does the deciding? If consciousness is a mere effect of chemical reactions in the brain, then your conscious act of deciding is not a free will act of your own, it is a result of some physical process that came before it. Your choices are controlled by physical events outside of your will. To put it more bluntly, you have no will at all. Not really. Why not? According to this view, physical states produce particular mental states, which produce particular physical states all following one after another in a determined pattern just like railroad cars following an engine. guess what? You have not only lost the rose and Beethoven and your teenage puppy love, you've lost you, too. And by the way, that is exactly what this article says.
Again, you can read the article in its entirety here.